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young amateurs and part-time professionals.
    Chesterfield were one of the few clubs to possess a gymnasium but any thoughts I may have had of working out on wall bars and practising my goalkeeping technique by diving around on crash mats, quickly evaporated.
    The ‘gym’ turned out to be a small cellar-like space underneath the sloping grandstand, no more than twenty-five feet by twelve. Its ceiling was a network of steel girders supporting the grandstand seating above. From one girder hung a plank of wood on a rope. This was for sit-ups. There were two old household mats on which players did press-ups, a short bench and a set of weights. A medicine ball was suspended from a girder above anothersloping plank of wood, the purpose of which was never clear to me in all the time I was there. Finally, there was a boxer’s punchball, suspended from another girder. It wasn’t what Arsenal were used to, but with eighteen players working away in such a confined place, that little gym was a sweatbox. After an hour in there, you would definitely shed a few ounces whether you were working out or just watching.
    Pummelling the punchball seemed at first to be an odd sort of football training. However, the trainer set me to work on it and in time I had not only strengthened my wrists, hands and arm muscles, but also improved mysense of timing and co-ordination. In later life, when jumping up above a knot of players to punch a ball clear, I rarely missed, and got good distance. I am sure those early workouts in the Chesterfield gym were the reason.
    As I had been promised, I was picked to play in all six Northern Intermediate games left in the season. I must have done something right because I was asked to report back for pre-season training in July 1953. When I did, the manager Ted Davison offered me a contract as a part-time professional player. I was to train at the club on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and play for whichever team I was selected for on the Saturday, for which I would be paid £3 a week. On signing the contract I was ecstatic. I may only have been a part-time player for a Third Division North club, but I couldn’t have been happier if I’d been offered full terms with Manchester United. I had been signed by a Football League club and saw this as a first step to a career in football. The day I signed for Chesterfield was the day I allowed myself to dream.
    I was so enthusiastic that the thrice-weekly travelling to Chesterfield never bothered me. After a hard day on the building site I would rush home, eat a sandwich, collect my training kit and be out of the door in fifteen minutes flat. I had to be quick because the journey to Saltergate involved a bus from my home in Catcliffe into Sheffield city centre, another bus to Chesterfield, then either catch yet another bus or embark on a brisk walk tothe ground. Today many youngsters won’t turn up for training or a game at a club unless they are given a lift. The thought of making their own way to training or a match on public transport appears anathema to them. Not to me. As I sat on the bus to Chesterfield, I felt full of anticipation about this new love of my life.
    My performances for the Chesterfield youth team earned me a promotion to the A team, then the reserves. I’d allowed myself to dream but the reality of the Central League woke me up with a jolt. Chesterfield Reserves, a team of hopeful young semi-professionals and amateurs, bolstered by two or three fulltime professionals who had not been chosen for the first team, were meat and drink to just about every team we came up against. More often than not, Chesterfield Reserves conceded over a hundred goals a season. In 1954–55, for example, we finished bottom with just three wins to our name. I conceded 122 goals in 42 games, an average of three per game; we lost quite often by four or five clear goals, sometimes more. Without putting too fine a point on it, I was a very busy goalkeeper. However, I’d like to